The Invasion – PT.1 [PARIS, FRANCE] “入侵事件”第一部分[法国，巴黎]

Walking through the ornate and tree-lined avenues of Paris, something out of the ordinary caught my eye. It seemed familiar but I wasn’t sure why? A mosaic motif, made of small brightly coloured tiles in the form of what looked like an alien positioned discreetly on the wall. I glimpsed at it, curious for a moment, and then carried on by. Within a second it was forgotten…

…until I passed another. And another! By this time I realised they were not just aliens, but space invaders and they were everywhere. These little mosaics quietly invaded the cities’ spaces, mostly unnoticed by passersby.

I came to recognise where they were normally hiding: on the corner of a building, above street signs, above the line of sight, the wall leading to an alleyway or the gable end of a building. As we walked the streets of Paris, we compulsively searched out and photographed the mosaic space invaders, as if we were collecting them in some way.

Intrigued by where they came from, I searched for what they might be online. I was surprised to find the amount of online content about the space invader phenomenon. They even have their own website2. The invasion is a result of a street art project by the incognito artist known only as “Invader”. His invasion projects span over 60 cities in over 30 countries1. The global span of this project in many well-known and well-loved cities has made the “Invasions” so internationally renowned.